Made to Stick

"Whenever we communicate, we are competing in a landscape where attention is our most precious commodity. The ability to get people’s attention and, more importantly, sustain that attention is super important. You have important things to say, and if people don’t pay attention and engage with you, you get in trouble. So what Dan and Chip do is they provide a six-step process to help people craft messages that stick, that are memorable, that are actionable. What I love about their writing is that not only do they provide really engaging storytelling, but they give really concrete examples that bring to life the principles that they’re talking about. So they provide an acronym called SUCCESS—I won’t go through all the elements—but, for example, ‘story’ is really important when you communicate. People also engage and remember more when you use concrete detail. Our brains are wired to remember ‘concrete’ detail better than high-level gist. Also, ‘surprise’ is important. The brain is attracted to novelty, things that change—so that can be really helpful as well."

"Made to St ick is about what makes a message memorable. Why is it that we can all say ‘Call me Ishmael’ and remember this opening line to Moby Dick , and yet none of us can say the second sentence. Made to Stick is a thoughtful, fact-based empirical study about this idea of stickiness. In all of the books I recommend we find the common theme that I believe advertisers should focus on, the customer end benefit – what’s in it for the end user. You can put out a message that says doughnuts are fattening and no one will pay attention to that. But if you put out another message which says that eating two doughnuts is the equivalent of having a breakfast of three eggs, two pieces of bacon, three pieces of toast and a glass of milk, suddenly people see the same fact in a different light. In this example, we see how it is possible to translate vague statistics into meaningful and real imagery."